This invention relates to a connecting bracket and, in particular to a bracket for connecting an armored cord to the housing of a telephone set.
Armored cords have been used for many years in public telephones as a means of connecting the handset of the phone to the phone housing. One type of armored cord in use today comprises a flexible outer sheath which houses the telephone conductors and which also houses a strength member comprised of a flexible cable. The strength member is provided with terminations in the form of swaged ends which help secure the armored cord to the telephone housing and to the handset.
At present, the available brackets for connecting the armored cord to the telephone housing comprise three-pieces or elements. In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 4,518,830 discloses one type of three-piece bracket in which the sheath and flexible cable with its swaged end termination of the armored cord are passed through an aperture in a mounting member. The sheath is held in the aperture by engagement of a crimped section of the sheath with a reduced section of the aperture.
A U-shaped spacer member is then situated adjacent the aperture and has a cutout on a first one of its legs. The flexible cable and swaged end termination after passing through the aperture in the mounting member pass between the legs of the U-shaped member, while the conductors of the armored cord pass along the cutout of the one leg.
A further inverted U-shaped securing member follows and overlies the spacer member and has a slot running along one leg and along the bridge connecting its legs. The flexible cable is passed through this slot from the bottom of the one leg so that the bottom of the swaged end termination abuts the top surface of the connecting bridge.
The U-shaped securing member and the mounting member are both provided with side flanges or tabs having holes which align when the three elements of the bracket are put together. These holes, in turn, are aligned with a hole in the telephone housing. When the bracket is being utilized, a screw is passed through the aligned holes to secure this end of the bracket to the housing. A further tab is provided on the other end of the mounting member and this tab interfits with a bridge shaped frame on the telephone housing to thereby secure the other end of the assembled bracket to the telephone housing.
The three-piece bracket described in the '830 patent is typically for telephone sets where the dial or key housing is made of metal. For telephone sets where the dial housing is made of plastic, the mounting member is somewhat different. In particular, the aperture in the mounting member extends to an edge of the member, while the hole which aligns with the hole in the securing member is towards the middle of the mounting member and not on a tab. Finally, the mouting member does not have a tab for engagement with a bridge on the telephone housing.
As can be appreciated, use of the aforesaid three-piece brackets is extremly tedious since installation of an armored cord with the brackets requires the coordination of three elements. Accordingly, installers in the field find them difficult if not impossible to use. As a result, they often devise there own techniques for quickly connecting the armored cord to the telephone housing. Unfortunately these techniques, in some cases, have proven unsatisfactory with the result that the cord may be pulled from the housing causing exposure and shorting of the condutors, and eventual failure of the telephone set.
While consideration might be given to making the prior art three-piece brackets as a unit, there construction and interrelationship are such that this cannot be accomplished and still arrive at a usable bracket. Accordingly, there exists a need for a bracket which is both unitary in nature and readily usable for armored cord connection.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide a bracket for connecting an armored cord to the housing of a telephone set which does not suffer from the above-mentioned disadvantages.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a bracket for connecting an armored cord to a telephone set which is constructed so that it can be installed with a minimum of effort and time.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a bracket for connecting an armored cord to a telephone set, which bracket is configured in such a way that the bracket can be made as a unitary piece.